The Iran Hostage Crisis

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Podcast Transcript

On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian Revolutionaries stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and took 66 American diplomats and citizens hostage. 

Over the next 444 days, the hostage crisis dominated the news and became the single biggest foreign policy issue for both the United States and Iran. 

Even after the crisis ended, it affected US/Iranian relations for the last forty-five ye

Learn more about the Iran Hostage Crisis, its causes and how it was resolved on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.


If you weren’t alive for it at the time, it would be hard to understand just how important the Iran Hostage Crisis was when it was unfolding.

The crisis dominated the news for over a year. Every single day during the crisis, every evening news program counted the days since the hostages were taken.

People all across the country tied yellow ribbons to trees outside their homes. 

It became a dominant issue in the 1980 election and arguably contributed to the fall of an American Presidency.

The hostage crisis wasn’t something that happened spontaneously, although it seemed like it at the time. 

The origins date back decades earlier to the 1920s. 

Reza Shah came to power in 1925 after overthrowing the Qajar dynasty. He pursued modernization and sought to reduce foreign influence, particularly that of Britain and the Soviet Union.

However, during World War II, Reza Shah refused to expel German advisors from Iran, alarming the British and Soviet governments.

In August 1941, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded Iran to secure oil supplies and establish supply routes for the Soviet war effort.

Under pressure from the Allies, Reza Shah was forced to abdicate on September 16, 1941, and was exiled to South Africa.

With British and Soviet approval, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Reza Shah’s son, was installed as the new Shah of Iran at the age of 21. His early reign was marked by limited power, as British and Soviet forces occupied Iran until the end of World War II.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, is the key to this entire story.

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later British Petroleum, dominated Iran’s oil industry, which gave Britain control over Iran’s oil revenues.

Mohammad Mossadegh led calls to nationalize the oil industry, arguing that Iran should control its own natural resources. In 1951, he was elected Prime Minister by the Iranian Parliament, with strong popular support.

Mossadegh nationalized The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, expelling British oil interests and taking control of Iranian oil. Britain retaliated by imposing an oil embargo, blockading Iranian oil exports and crippling the economy.

The Shah and conservative elements in Iran opposed Mossadegh’s policies, fearing a shift toward socialism. Mossadegh tried to reduce the Shah’s power, creating further tensions.

In 1953, the CIA and British intelligence orchestrated Operation Ajax, overthrowing Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nationalized Iran’s oil industry. This reinstated the Shah’s autocratic rule.

The Shah implemented Western-friendly policies and rapid modernization, but his rule was increasingly authoritarian, relying on SAVAK, his brutal secret police, to suppress opposition.

SAVAK was the secret police, intelligence, and security organization of Iran under the Shah, established in 1957 with the help of the CIA. It was notorious for its brutal repression, using torture, surveillance, and assassinations to silence political opposition, particularly nationalists and Islamists. 

The Shah was a brutal dictator who became hated by the majority of his people. However, he was also a staunch ally of the United States in the Cold War. 

Opposition to the Shah’s rule began to organize around a religious leader named Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a vocal critic who was exiled in 1964.

By 1978, widespread discontent over economic struggles, political repression, and Western influence led to mass protests. 

In January 1979, the Shah fled Iran, and Khomeini returned in February to lead the Islamic Revolution.

In April 1979, Iran officially became the Islamic Republic of Iran, led by Supreme Leader Khomeini.

I’m skipping a lot of detail, but at this point in April 1979, the Shah was out, the Ayatollah was in, and at this point, the United States was intent on continuing their relations with Iran via the new government. Maybe they wouldn’t be as close as they were before, but the US would recognize the new government, and they would trade ambassadors.

When the Shah fled Iran, he was seriously ill. He had been diagnosed with leukemia in 1974, and it had become gravely worse during the protests of 1978. 

After fleeing Iran, the Shah became an international hot potato. He went to Egypt, to Morocco, to the Bahamas, to Mexico. 

During this time, the new Iranian government began to demand the extradition of the Shah back to Iran to stand trial. As the Shah was moving from country to country, his cancer continued to worsen. 

On October 22, 1979, President Jimmy Carter reluctantly allowed the Shah into the United States for medical treatment at the New York–Cornell Medical Center.

This decision enraged the Iranian revolutionaries, who saw it as U.S. interference and potentially the prelude for another US-backed coup to put the Shah back in power. 

Large anti-American demonstrations erupted across Iran, particularly in Tehran.

Protesters demanded the Shah’s extradition to stand trial for corruption, human rights abuses, and crimes against the Iranian people.

Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers denounced the U.S., accusing Carter of interfering in Iranian affairs.

Carter, for his part, seemed to have allowed the Shah into the US for purely humanitarian reasons. Carter felt it would be morally wrong to deny a sick man medical care.

His advisors were split on the decision. 

His National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, pushed for allowing the Shah in, arguing that the U.S. should stand by its former ally.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance warned that it could provoke a crisis in Iran and advised against it.

Regardless of the thinking behind Carter’s decision, Carter totally underestimated the level of hostility in Iran towards the US.

Protests in Iran exploded, and they were targeted at the focal point of the American presence in the country, the American Embassy in Tehran. 

On November 4, 1979, less than two weeks after the Shah arrived in the United States, a group of Iranian students aligned with Khomeini’s revolutionary government stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

As for the Shah, the center of the controversy, he was in the US for less than two months. On December 15, he left for Panama and then left for Egypt again in March of 1980. 

On July 27, 1980, The Shah died in Cairo at age 60.

The students who stormed the embassy initially took 66 hostages, including diplomats, military personnel, and civilians. Three were later released on November 19, ten on November 20th, and one later in July, leaving 52 Americans held captive.

The hostages were subjected to isolation, blindfolded interrogations, and threats of execution. Many were kept in solitary confinement for long periods, confined to small, dark rooms with little information about the outside world. Their captors frequently staged mock executions, pretending to prepare them for death, only to halt at the last moment, a tactic meant to break their spirit. 

They were also forced to participate in propaganda efforts, appearing in staged photographs and videos that the Iranian government used to humiliate the United States.

Communication among the hostages was severely restricted, though some managed to pass messages or tap out Morse code on the walls. Basic hygiene was a struggle, and food was often inadequate or withheld as punishment. Medical care was inconsistent, though some hostages received limited treatment when their health deteriorated.

The United States had limited options with which they could respond. President Carter imposed economic sanctions and froze Iranian assets in U.S. banks. He also expelled Iranian diplomats and attempted to pressure Iran diplomatically.

1980 was an election year, and the entire episode made the leader of the world’s most powerful country look weak. In a highly unusual move, Carter actually had a primary challenge in his own party as an incumbent from Senator Ted Kennedy.

The pressure to take action culminated with Operation Eagle Claw. It was a daring but ultimately disastrous U.S. military mission launched on April 24, 1980, to rescue the American hostages. 

The mission involved multiple phases requiring U.S. forces to infiltrate Iran, rendezvous in the desert at a location called Desert One, and then proceed with an air assault on the U.S. Embassy. 

However, the plan was complicated and risky, requiring helicopters and transport planes to work in perfect coordination. Shortly after launching, the operation faced serious issues, including severe dust storms that damaged equipment and impaired visibility. 

Mechanical failures resulted in three helicopters becoming inoperable, reducing the force below the minimum required for the mission’s success. With the plan compromised, the mission was aborted before reaching Tehran.

During the withdrawal, tragedy struck when a helicopter collided with a C-130 transport aircraft, causing a massive fireball that killed eight U.S. servicemen. The surviving personnel were forced to flee, abandoning equipment, vehicles, and classified documents, which the Iranians later seized. 

The hostage crisis became a story every night on the news. Every news broadcast would start with the number of days that the hostages had been held. The phrase “America Held Hostage” became a daily feature on ABC News, which later evolved into the program Nightline, hosted by Ted Koppel. 

The media’s relentless coverage of the crisis kept the hostages’ fate at the center of national consciousness, fueling a sense of helplessness and anger. Schools, businesses, and communities organized yellow ribbon campaigns, symbolizing hope for the hostages’ safe return.

Public sentiment was overwhelmingly hostile toward Iran, with large-scale protests erupting across the United States. Many Americans burned Iranian flags, chanted anti-Iran slogans, and called for further military action. 

The Carter Administration desperately wanted to come to some sort of agreement before the election.

However, with the failed rescue mission, possible negotiations between Iran and the US were at an impasse. By mid-1980, efforts by intermediaries, such as the United Nations and various European countries, had also failed.

An intermediary was found in the nation of Algeria. The Algerians began their involvement in the Iran Hostage Crisis in the latter half of 1980, with serious mediation efforts starting around September and October. Algeria was chosen as an intermediary because it had diplomatic relations with both the United States and Iran and had maintained a neutral stance throughout the crisis.

The Iranians had no incentive to hurry the negotiations because they didn’t want to give Cater a win before the election. 

Negotiations intensified once the election was over, and Jimmy Carter had lost to Ronal Reagan. 

The final agreement became known as the Algiers Accords. 

Under the terms of the Algiers Accords, signed on January 19, 1981, the United States agreed to unfreeze $8 billion in Iranian assets, lift economic sanctions, and pledge non-interference in Iran’s internal affairs. Additionally, Iran was granted immunity from lawsuits related to the hostage crisis, ensuring that the U.S. government and private citizens could not pursue legal claims against Iran for the incident. 

The Iranian leadership, particularly Ayatollah Khomeini, delayed final approval of the deal until after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, refusing to release the hostages while Jimmy Carter was still in office as a symbolic act of defiance. Just minutes after Reagan was sworn in on January 20, 1981, the hostages were released, marking the official end of the crisis.

The Iran Hostage Crisis had a series of wide-ranging impacts, many of which can still be felt today. 

For Iran, the hostage crisis was a symbolic victory against the West, strengthening Ayatollah Khomeini’s rule and entrenching the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

One of the most immediate and lasting effects was the severing of diplomatic ties between the United States and Iran, which remain broken to this day. The U.S. responded with economic sanctions that have only increased over the years, restricting Iran’s access to global financial systems.

The failure of Operation Eagle Claw resulted in a greater emphasis on counterterrorism and hostage rescue operations, including the creation of the U.S. Special Operations Command in 1987.

The continuous crisis coverage set the standard for 24-hour news cycles and crisis-focused journalism.

The distrust and animosity it created remain unresolved, ensuring that the hostage crisis is remembered not just as a historical event but as an enduring symbol of broken diplomacy.